I thought I had washed my hands of the 2026 Mariners, our little fraction of season tickets having been exhausted last weekend during their face-plant against the Athletics. But no. I opted to forgo wrestling with overgrown blackberry vines when a friend said he had a stray ticket for the M’s Thursday matinee against the Rangers.

It’s been the slog of slogs, this season. Expected to rival, or outpace, the near-World Series scrappers of 2025, the Mariners have redefined awful. Which is to say they’ve done what a franchise does when, 50 years into its existence, it remains the only team in baseball that hasn’t been to the World Series.

In one of the weakest divisions since baseball introduced them, the Mariners are 69-78, when all it would have taken is a vaguely competent team to win it. They’ve been a spectacular fail.

Thursday, I wore the T-shirt, bought last winter, that seemed so brassy and bold: “We are SO BACK.” Little did we know that it actually meant “So back of the Astros and Rangers.”

The Mariner shortfall has been so pervasive, so thorough, that it defies brief description. But here goes: The club scores fewer runs than anybody else in baseball. The pitching has been spotty at best. One fielding metric has them worst of 30 in that component.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was your evening?

Yes, it’s had injuries. In the sort of randomness that seems to trail this franchise, Julio Rodriguez got hit in the back of the head by a thrown ball while running the bases, causing a concussion. Brendan Donovan sustained his own concussion when he was hit by a pitch in the batting cage. Donovan hasn’t been able to open the front door to go out and get the mail without getting hurt.

Cal Raleigh, the catcher who slugged 60 homers in 2025, has fallen off a cliff. Rodriguez, who seemed on the precipice of stardom early in his young career, has been closer to the edge of pedestrian. His 61 RBIs was tied for 92nd in the majors entering the game.

Josh Naylor, who captivated fans after his trade-deadline acquisition in 2025, has mostly repulsed them in ’26. He has 10 home runs – that’ s a first baseman – playing through a wrist injury.

They added veteran Rob Refsnyder in the off-season, a noted killer of lefthanded pitching. He hit .147 against lefties before they DFA’ed him. Refsnyder thus became the latest example of how good Mariner president Jerry Dipoto has been at identifying players who had their last great run just before he acquired them.

Pat Gillick, the general manager of another generation, used to talk about how a team needed to be brushing up against 800 runs a season to succeed in the American League. The M’s are at 581, last in the bigs, which means they need to be getting busy in their last 15 games. They’re last in average (.229), last in OPS (.682) and seventh in strikeouts.

Seventy-five times this year, they’ve scored three or fewer runs.

Ah, but you say, the pitching … the narrative has recently been, if this club just gets into the post-season, it’s dangerous because of its starting pitching. Well, that rotation includes George Kirby, whose ERA was 5.06 in July and 4.96 in August. It includes Bryce Miller, probably pitching through an ailing arm, but mostly brutal since July 4. It includes Bryan Woo, better lately, but with eight starts in 2026 in which he’s allowed five or more earned runs.

We haven’t even gotten to the manager. I tended to give Dan Wilson a long leash through a gathering torrent of criticism this season, reasoning that he knows things we can’t, like how a reliever might be feeling before the game.

The sheer weight of Wilson’s decisions, especially with the bullpen, lost me. He leaves in starters too long, he yanks relievers too quickly. Then he summarizes it all in insipid press conferences that begin, “Tough one tonight …” He hasn’t said anything worth quoting since about tax day.

It would take something on the order of a Chaminade-over-Virginia upset if Wilson is back next year.

Further, the thought occurred last week when the A’s flattened the M’s in three of four – the A’s, missing half their lineup and 31 under .500 -- that these seemingly meaningless September games could rattle ownership into making bigger changes. The masses are unhappy, except for that segment mollified by the latest Funko Pop giveaway.

Thursday, the Mariners didn’t produce a baserunner until the sixth inning against Jacob DeGrom. In the seventh, they got to the Texas bullpen, and Rodriguez hit a three-run homer for the victory, after which he talked about tinkering with his swing in the 147th game of the season.

Fans exited north of the stadium, below a pink T-Mobile billboard heralding the “best team.” That’s the Seahawks, who won their 2026 season opener in unlikely fashion the night before, one more reminder of how many things they do right while the team across the street is doing so many wrong.

Wait ‘til next year. On to the next half-century.